Dr. Yair Ben DavidComplex psychological barriers, distrust of others and the absence of immediate reward for actions to save the Earth, encourage stagnation. So, what can we do? The answer lie in the “Global Warming Glow”
Many psychological factors influence our position on global warming, and most of them have nothing to do with the weather. I will leave them for another article. In this post, I will address an equally interesting and important question on the climate issue: what will cause those who are troubled by the trend, the human influence on it and the damage done to our world, to stand up as one man and do something about it? And, in this context, there is also a continuing question: If so many of us believe that the Earth is warming up because of us – why are we doing so little?
Global warming and human involvement in the trend, it often seems, provoke cravings that resemble religious belief. There are the “devout believers” with the apocalyptic projections, and there are the “indifferent skeptics” who will probably remain so even when the world is bald. Both sides (disclosure: I believe in the effect of man on global warming) are affected by the “confirmation bias”, that is, the bias that causes us to accept facts and evidence that support what we already believe.
Scientists believe that humanity will be able to cope with a one-and-a-half rise in temperature over the pre-industrial era. Two more degrees would already be a catastrophe.
Prof. Tehila Kogut, a social decision-making researcher at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, addresses, among other things, what causes people to work for public causes. Her research and results are also very relevant in the context of the activity to curb the global-warming process. According to her, one of the key problems is that individual acts in the environmental context are always a drop in the ocean, and that the effect depends on the large number of people behaving like us. This situation puts into the equation a high psychological obstacle: our degree of motivation to act depends on our degree of belief / outlook on what and how much others will do.
“Most people believe that others will work for the environment and society less than them. Because people’s actions on such issues are based on their belief about the intentions and actions of others – the less we believe others will do, the less we do,” says Kogut, and mentions a study that she conducted with a few of her colleagues: “We looked at what happens when people are presented with the problem of severe waste accumulation and let them choose a policy for the municipality in the area where they live – should citizens be required to sort the waste themselves or should taxes be raised so that the municipality does it?”
“We asked the same people what they would prefer to do even before they chose a policy, and the majority said they prefer to do it themselves rather than pay. In contrast, when asked if others would be careful in sorting waste like them – not only was their estimate low, their choice also changed. Now, they preferred to pay the municipality and not trust the residents. We also found that the estimate regarding other people’s cooperation decreases the further away they live. That is, the further away people are, the less likely they are to act,” Kogut notes.
Cogut attributes the state in which disbelief in others directly impacts our personal course of action, to a basket of psychological phenomena called “self-serving biases,” and specifically one of them: the “better-than-average” bias. It turns out that, in most areas, humans think they are better than average. They perceive themselves as smarter, funnier, more thorough and, according to Kogut’s research, more contributing to society.
While this bias contributes to and protects our self-image, the bottom line is that we cannot all, as good as we are, be better than average. The problem, Kogut says, is that if we believe that others will contribute less than we do – it will lower our motivation, which, as mentioned, is directly dependent on the motivation of the others.
Another matter that makes the climate issue even more difficult is the lack of immediate reward. “Economist James Andreoni has argued that one of the things that make us take moral action is a feeling called ‘Warm Glow’. It’s that good feeling we feel when exposed to the consequences of our moral act. For example, when a homeless person receives a donation from us, the ‘Warm Glow’ gives us strong motivation to continue taking moral action in the future,” Kogut says, “in the case of the Earth, the result of the action against the damage caused by man to the Earth’s climate is very distant in time. Therefore, it is very difficult to feel the “Warm Glow”. In an era when a very large part of our reward system is based on instant gratification, our ability to act is further impaired.”
However, Kogut is not completely pessimistic and explains that there is a way to create a “Warm Glow” feeling even without clear and immediate exposure to the results of the action we took. “Just like we make children feel good when they do something good, we can also create a good feeling among those who work against global warming. We can make them feel that their actions have a direct positive effect, that is, to create a connection between the good deed and the good feeling regardless of the outcome.” In other words, in the environmental context, it is necessary to create a sense of “Global Warm Glow” even when it is almost impossible to be immediately exposed to the results of our actions.
Kogut says there are many other psychological factors that can affect how we work against global warming. For example: the degree of social consensus around these actions, the improvement in the social status of those working on the issue, and more. Of course, the sequence of psychological biases that cause us all to act less on the environmental issue should not slacken our hands. It just highlights what we have to deal with in order to achieve better cooperation on the climate issue. There is no doubt that, in this burning issue, before humans change the world, they need to change themselves.
How do people make moral decisions? Do men and women have different moral systems? Why is it that, in many cases, our actions are different from our moral stand, and why do we expect others to behave differently from the way we expect ourselves to behave? And when will we rely on computers and robots to make moral decisions for us?
Psychological research tries to provide answers to these questions. In my blog, I will share research in the field and try to tell, at least in part, the story of moral psychology in recent years.
____________________
Yair Ben David is a researcher in the fields of developmental and moral psychology at Tel Aviv University.
